Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument – Part Two

We resume our visit to the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument with the ocotillo but before I begin I wanted to share a picture of the desert mistletoe.  When I posted yesterday’s blogs I couldn’t find these pictures and it was to dark to go out and take new ones.

A healthy Palo Verde tree

This Palo Verde tree is being robbed of nutrients because of all the desert mistletoe covering it. I can see why they call it a tree thief!

The ocotillo (pronounced OH-koh-TEE-yo) is my favorite cacti … although I learned during our tour that its actually not a cacti, it is a shrub from the candlewood family.

Usually, when we see an ocotillo, it looks dead … I know I have mentioned this a few times in blogs so I will try to be brief here … it’s just cause I love the shrub so much I can’t stop talking about it 🙂

This one looks dead but it’s very much alive and will soon look like the one above.

If you look closer at the branches you will see sharp thorns, but you will also probably see bits of green, which indicates the shrub is alive. When the rain comes, either the gentle rains of winter or the thunderstorms of summer, an amazing transformation takes place! Within two days the stems turn greener and new leaves appear. As the days pass shiny green leaves will cover the ocotillo.

This picture was actually taken at Picacho Peak State Park a few years ago but it’s one of my favourites!

From late February through early April red flowers will appear on the top of the ocotillo and believe me I will post a few pictures when that happens 🙂

Ocotillo is used in building houses and cut buried stems will often root and create a living fence. I also read that you can soak ocotillo flowers in water to make a refreshing drink.

Next up was the cholla (pronounced CHOY-yuh), also know as the jumping cactus.

Cholla fruit is not very tasty and doesn’t usually provide viable seeds so they need a different way to spread out and reproduce. By grabbing hold of animals and humans they are carried away from the parent plant. Where the cluster falls it may grow into a new plant, which is probably how these two little cholla came to grow.

Once we left the Visitor Center we took a drive through the campground, which we will definitely stay at the next time we are out this way so we can do some of the many hikes in the park. We then drove the ten-mile, round trip, North Puerto Blanco Drive to the Pinkley Peak Picnic Area. This was a very pretty drive along mostly gravel road through the desert and I think I will let the pictures tell the story.

It’s pretty when the cacti begin to bloom. I think the cooler, wetter winter we have had will make for an awesome spring full of flowers!

There was a warning at the beginning of road that this is an area very close to the Mexican border and smuggling and/or illegal entry do occur. However as long as you stay on the main trails, travel during daylight hours, and don’t travel alone, you are unlikely to encounter illegal activity. Migrants and smugglers want to evade detection so they make every effort to avoid contact with people, but just in case …

There is no shortage of Border Patrol vehicles and personnel in this area of Arizona!

After leaving the monument we headed four miles south to check out the border town of Lukeville, but other than the border crossing their wasn’t much there.

 

 

You can see the border fence, with a Border Patrol vehicle, along the south edge of the Monument

Lukeville border crossing into Mexico.

We also make a quick stop for the obligatory picture in Why … the one every blogger puts on their post when going through Why 🙂

The town was originally known as “Y” because SR85 and SR86 intersected in a Y-intersection. The name was changed when residents petitioned for a post office. At that time Arizona law required all city names to have at least three letters, so town founders changed the name to “Why”. Eventually the intersection for the two highways was made into a T intersection south of the original Y in order to make it safer.

Until next time …